The Art of Attracting Ideal Clients

Ideal clients are those people we love to serve and are good at serving.

However, when professionals want new business, they tend to chase after any clients who appear willing to pay the bill.

Instead of searching for new clients, attract the best, the clients who are ideal for us.

Stop Searching For New Clients

Not surprisingly, looking for new clients is also called prospecting.

This approach is modeled on prospectors searching for precious metals such as gold.

Certainly the search part of the process is like looking for new clients for our professional services. And yes, an element of our marketing includes looking for signs that we are close to finding what we seek—potentially new clients. But that’s where professionals marketing their services part company with the prospector looking for precious metals.

Prospectors seek inanimate things like seams of gold or nuggets that they themselves need and want for commercial purposes. Once the gold has been extracted and processed, it is sold as the commodity it is.

Among other things, marketing professional services is about identifying individuals and organizations who want or need the kind of help we offer. Our work involves interacting with people, not processing physical things. Unlike prospectors, we cannot physically extract potential clients from their surroundings and then apply appropriate procedures to generate the outcomes that we want.

Also unlike prospectors we can engage potential clients, helping them understand the benefits that they will receive from our services. The ideal outcome of this engagement is a relationship with people that leads to their voluntarily choosing us to help them with whatever problems or issues they face. Hopefully, this relationship will be ongoing, with potential clients making the transition to actual clients and from there to satisfied clients.

Regardless of the fee revenue they generate, satisfied clients represent a permanent, renewable asset capable of continuously producing new revenue through repeat and referral business.

It is this ability to engage potential clients that limits the relevance of prospecting for leads to marketing professional services.